Gapless playback from Emby webpage ?

[EmbyPenguin 17]

Hi, 

To listen to my music, I use a Raspberry pi4 powered by RuneAudio, an Arch based OS for "sound on Raspberry pi4". 

My music is served by a Mini PC running an Arch based distro called Arco on which I installed Emby without any problems. 

The music library is stored on a NVMe drive in a USB3.2 case. 

When I am at my desk, I would like to remotely control the music I am listening to from my computer so I open Emby's webpage. 

From there, I select to play music to RuneAudio with the little symbol at the top right corner. 

And it plays so that is cool. 

BUT : between each track I have a gap that lasts for at least 3 seconds. Not really nice especially when listening to live concerts, concept albums or operas. 

Is there a way to reduce that gap ? I sometyimes have a really short gap (like 0.5 seconds) that I could live with... But not always

Any setting or suggestion (sorry if this is not the right place to post). 

Regards. 

P.S. : If I remote control the emby server from my tablet with an app like BubbleUPnP or Symfonium, they can play files gapless.So the renderer can do that...

[Luke 42078]

Hi, the problem is that the browser video player has no officially supported mechanism for gapless playback, so that means you have to finish one track, then it will start loading the next track. This is the reason for the delay. Players that support gapless will actually start loading the next track towards the end of the current track, but the browser audio player has no mechanism for preloading subsequent tracks.

[EmbyPenguin 17]

Hi Luke, 

Thanks a lot for your answer. 

The browser video/audio player is not the only one showing this problem

The Android app has the same problem

But indeed, when I play a whole album and look at the playlist of the Raspberry pi4, it contains only one track. 
And obviously Emby app can't do as some other apps (Symfonium of BublenUPnP) and handle "gapless" when it's sending files

Too bad, I think the emby Android app is one of the most cleverly organized one. 
I'll stick to something else as I listen to a lot of classical music and that requires gapless...
Else you can't enjoy your music.

Thanks a lot...

Edited March 5, 2023 by EmbyPenguin

[Luke 42078]

Emby for Android already supports gapless playback just FYI.

[EmbyPenguin 17]

Hi,

Yes, I've read that in some other thread. 
But as I understand it it only supports gapless playback to the "local device". 

If you're using it as a "remote" to drive a distant device (like I do : I use the tablet to tell my NAS to send files to my Raspberry pi4), then gapless playback does not work. 
I can tell for sure as I am experiencing this right now...

Unless of course there's a setting to check that I have not seen

Regards. 

[Luke 42078]

It's supported either way, but yes, you're right. Slower network performance can lead to it not being gapless.

What happens is the next track starts pre-loading while the first track is still playing. If this hasn't finished yet by the time the next track is ready to start, then it won't be gapless. We might be able to adjust it a little and start doing it earlier to see if it helps.

[EmbyPenguin 17]

Hi Luke,

Thanks for your answer and infos. 

As far as I am concerned, here is the way I use Emby. 

My music files are stored on a device that is used as a music server exclusively. 
That device is a "mini PC" powered by an Intel i5 11th gen. 
It uses Linux Arch as an OS and of course I activated Emby as a service. 
Music is stored on a USB drive that is a NVMe drive and hooked up with USB 3.2
When I transfer files to that drive from my PC, transfer speed over 2.5Gbpe network is about 300MB/s. 

The device is hooked up to network over a network switch that can do 1Gbps. 

Files are sent to the "renderer" which is a Raspberry pi4 powered by runeAudio. 

Music can be sent to the renderer in two different ways : 
- 1°) using the Emby web page from the computer directly with Ethernet network connection ; 
- 2°) using the Emby app that runs from my tablet or my smartphone. 

Why am I explaining all this ? Because I doubt (but can't tell for sure) that "slow network" is culprit here  

Whatever I use, the result is the same and is not nice for me : 
- 1°) there is no gapless : gap is variable : between half a second to 4 or 5 seconds ; 
- 2°) it is related probably, but there is probably a "blank"' that is sent because as runeAudio performs CamillaDSP there is a little "crack" at the beginning of the playback to make the necessary adjustments
- 3°) it happens quite often that Emby does not continue playback after first trak...

If I send files to runeAudio using other apps, like BubbleUPnP or Symfonium, I have none of those problems. 
So of course I could use those, but I really think that the Emby interface is vastly superior to almost anything else
And thus, I'd like to be able to use it

So if something could be looked into, I'd be eternally thankful.
Or if there is a setting to tell the app to preload ? 

If this can help, I can also use UAPP as a renderer. 
And that is useful because it shows the playlist that is on wait. 
When I send files over an app like Bublle UPnP it indeed displays 2 tracks in the playlist so next track is "preloaded". 
When I send files over Emby, it only displays one file... and no gapless of course
So maybe there is a setting I need to enable to allow this "preloading" the next file ? 
Or a way to retrieve a log file I can then send ? 

Regards from France. 

FRED

Edited March 17, 2023 by EmbyPenguin

[Luke 42078]

For DLNA there's a method we need to call to tell it what will be played after the current item so that it can start preloading it, so we'll need to look into that.

[EmbyPenguin 17]

Hi Luke,

Thanks a lot for your answer. 

I'll wait and hope it will happen sometime soon

Regards.